Virginia and Joe Thorndike have been married for twenty-two years, and now she's in love with a surgeon thirteen years her junior. She leaves her husband and flies to Miami to start living with Rich Villamano, but there he tells her he has changed his mind and they must go their own ways. In an instant their four-year affair is over. She takes off in his car, heading north with no luggage, no hope or destination. She buys a bottle of gin and drinks it straight. Afraid that she'll kill herself or someone else on the road, she abandons the car, flies to New York and takes an airport hotel room. She has no home and nowhere to go.

In this biographical novel, much is remembered and much imagined. Flashbacks from Virginia's youth expose the sexual abuse by her father, an affair with her high school diving coach, and her marriage to a jealous first husband. Virginia's troubles echo the plight of both Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina, in this fearless book about families, love and loss.